No. 6 Collaborations Project
No.6 Collaborations Project is the fourth studio album by Ed Sheeran. It was released on 12 July 12, 2019, by Asylum Records and Atlantic Records. The album is a follow-up to Sheeran's 2011 EP No. 5 Collaborations Project, and includes a range of guest appearances from artists such as Justin Bieber, Camila Cabello, Travis Scott, Eminem, 50 Cent, Cardi B, Paulo Londra, Young Thug and Bruno Mars, among others, alongside British rappers Stormzy, J Hus and Dave. It was preceded by the singles "I Don't Care" with Bieber, "Cross Me" featuring Chance the Rapper and PnB Rock, "Beautiful People" featuring Khalid, "Best Part of Me" featuring Yebba, "Blow" with Chris Stapleton and Mars, "South of the Border" featuring Cabello and Cardi B, "Antisocial" with Scott, and "Take Me Back to London" featuring Stormzy. The album debuted atop the UK Albums Chart and US Billboard 200. Background and release Sheeran announced the album on May 23, 2019. The day after on May 24, a new track called "Cross Me" featuring rappers Chance the Rapper and PnB Rock was released, The album is a follow-up to the last of his five EPs, No. 5 Collaborations Project (2011). In a post on Instagram, he said, "Before I was signed in 2011, I made an EP called No.5 Collaborations Project. Since then, I've always wanted to do another, so I started No.6 on my laptop when I was on tour last year. I'm a huge fan of all the artists I've collaborated with and it's been a lot of fun to make." The album is his fourth studio album, although Sheeran has described it as a compilation album. Sheeran released the album's track list on May 23, 2019, but the names of all the featured artists on the unreleased tracks were redacted. The track list includes 15 tracks, a departure from his previous three studio albums, which each consisted of 12 tracks. The track list including all guest appearances was revealed on June 18, 2019. In an interview with Charlamagne tha God, Sheeran said that the Moulin Rouge! version of "Lady Marmalade" inspired him to make the album. No.6 Collaborations Project was released on July 12, 2019. The album was made available for pre-order on May 23, 2019. Singles "I Don't Care", a collaboration with Justin Bieber, was released on May 10, 2019, as the album's lead single, although the album itself had not yet been announced at that time. The song marks Sheeran's third collaboration with Bieber, and the first in which both sing on the same track. "Cross Me" was released on May 24, 2019 as the album's second single. On May 20, 2019, Sheeran posted a picture of the track's title on his Instagram account; the picture included the names of two collaborators, but the names themselves were crossed out. The caption on the picture posed the question, "Can you guess who's on the next one?". The two collaborators were later revealed to be Chance the Rapper and PnB Rock. "Beautiful People", featuring Khalid, was confirmed to be the third single off of the album by Sheeran on June 23, 2019. On June 25, 2019, Sheeran posted a video of Khalid recording part of the song on his Instagram. On June 26, 2019, video of Sheeran performing part of the song acoustically was posted. It was released on June 28, 2019. "Best Part of Me" featuring YEBBA, the fourth single, was released along with "Blow" on July 5, 2019. Sheeran announced the song's release the day before on July 4, 2019 (4th of July or Independence Day 2019). "BLOW" with Chris Stapleton and Bruno Mars, the fifth single from the album, was released on July 5, 2019. Sheeran announced the song and music video's release on June 30, 2019. On July 12, 2019, Sheeran released "South of the Border" featuring Camila Cabello and Cardi B and "Antisocial" with Travis Scott. "South of the Border" was released to Australian radios. "Antisocial" was announced by Sheeran the day earlier. "Take Me Back to London" featuring Stormzy was released on August 9, 2019, as the eighth single from the album. On August 23, Sheeran released a remix of the song with the adding of rappers Jaykae and Aitch alongside with Stormzy. Critical Reception No.6 Collaborations Project received mixed reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews and ratings from selected mainstream critics, the album received an average of 57, based on 14 reviews, indicating mixed or average reviews". In a positive review, Alexis Petridis of ''The Guardian wrote: "Unsurprisingly, the end result sounds not unlike a Top 20 rundown or Spotify's Hot Hits UK playlist. That should give you an idea of whether you'll like it. ... Sheeran succeeds in pulling off his patent trick of simultaneously stunning you with the pitiless commercial efficiency of his writing while retaining a certain ordinary-bloke humanity." Similarly, Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph says, "Sheeran has delivered a solid commercial showcase of the power of contemporary pop music brands. It is a case of Superstars Assemble. A fan base shared is a fan base multiplied." Nick Levine of NME concluded that "It's less an album, more a collection of savvy and generally savvy collaborations which blurs traditional genre boundaries unselfconsciously and acknowledges that Latin-pop is the sound of the near-future. Most of the time, it's a credit to Sheeran's songwriting skills and well-honed persona." Helen Brown of The Independent said of the album: "Though his fare is bland, it is sincere and hygienically prepared. No thrills, but all affable, affordable, family-friendly fills." Writing for Pitchfork, Rawiya Kameir opined that "few releases have been as baldly transparent and destined for ubiquity as No.6, which has all the conspicuous mining of a Drake album, but very little of the finesse or cultural fluency". Commercial Performance No.6 Collaborations Project debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 with 173,000 album-equivalent units (AEUs), including 70,000 pure album sales. It is Sheeran's third US number-one album. In the UK, the album debuted at number one on the Official Albums Chart with 125,000 AEUs - making it the fastest selling album of 2019 (as of July 23, 2019). In its first week, No.6 Collaborations Project had 57,000 physical sales, 18,000 downloads and 70.2 million track streams in the UK. This is Sheeran's fourth UK number-one album. The album debuted at number one in other 14 countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Taiwan, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and Finland. It also debuted at number two in Italy, France and Germany. Category:Albums